Jonathan Bydlak in The American Conservative

In The American Conservative this week, Institute for Spending Reform founder and president, Jonathan Bydlak, wrote about the need to fully understand Pentagon reforms and cuts when pushing them. He compares this idea to the current gun control debate, where some have very little knowledge of the things they are pushing to regulate.

On Pentagon spending, he states that:

Too often, fiscal hawks’ refusal to understand the basic details of what we want reformed ends up ceding ground to the other side. We may complain about those who don’t listen to the generals when it comes to wasteful boondoggles, but do we know what military leaders actually want? What are the current proposals, and can we explain what’s going on instead of just griping about how much Lockheed stands to make?

For these reasons, the organization I lead, the Institute for Spending Reform, is determined to catalogue every available option for Pentagon savings—ideas suggested by CBO and GAO experts, as well as reforms the Pentagon itself has begun pursuing. Ultimately, we’ve found 84 items that total over $140 billion in potential savings in one year alone.